PASSPORT ANNOYANCES.
THE Premier, in enumerating at the Lord Mayor's banquet the municipal superiorities foreign visiters to the Exhibition would find, might have included in the list exemption from passport ob- structions. It is a nuisance, which, like the plague of burglary, typhus, influenza, and other autumnal visitations, regularly under- goes newspaper audit at the close of every touring season, and then slumbers undisturbed till the next. At present, from melio- rations introduced or promised, and the conflicting returns of tra- vellers, it is not easy to collect precisely the existing routine gene- rally on the Continent; but the practice can be stated, from recent experience, in one territorial section, and that the most frequented. To visit France no passport is requisite, but it is in order to leave it ; at least after an excursion into the interior. On application to the French Consulate in London, a person would be told no pass- port is necessary to go to Paris; which is true, but not the whole truth. A Londoner might land at Havre, travel by rail to. Paris, and take up his abode there, and a passport wouldnot be asked for ; but he would be stopped in his egress from the republic with- out a permit, and a permit to embark would not be granted with-
out the production of a passport. If he 'visited the Louvre on a weeVday, (on-Sundayit is open to all without question,) he would be asked for his passport, and to enter his name and address, as at
the Mitseuni ; or in traversing the rooms of the HOtel de • Ville he might be required to produce it. It is not easy to see the advantage the French Government de- rives from persistence in the passport system. Profit there can be none, as the fees are mostly pocketed by English consuls or their agents ; and as an instrument of preventive police, passports must be wholly futile, being granted of course to every applicant, under any name or description, though if false it subjects to severe pUnishment by the French code. To strangers they offer no conve- nience, unless it be under circumstances just mentioned; or where there is a desire to take apartments and fix permanently in the capi- tal, it may be more agreeable, as is sometimes required, to show a passport than enter into verbal detail of name, degree, or pursuit. A trifling set-off this to the annoyances offered in locomotion; and both passports and permits had better be left to descend to the tomb of the Capulets,—as conterminous customhouses are fast doing in the interior of Germany.
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